


Friends and Wine

by Delphi



Series: Friends and Wine [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Courtship, Drama, M/M, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-08
Updated: 2007-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:41:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Professors Snape and Slughorn reacquaint themselves over the course of <i>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends and Wine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beth H (bethbethbeth)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethbethbeth/gifts).



> Written for the 2007 run of Reversathon on LJ.

_So life's year begins and closes;  
     Days though shortening still can shine;  
What though youth gave love and roses;  
     Age still leaves us friends and wine._  
          - Thomas Moore, "Spring and Autumn"

  


Summer had only just ended, and already Severus Snape could feel the winter coming on. It settled heavily on his shoulders and seeped into his bones as he left the start of term feast, the night having spread out dark and still over the Great Hall. He pushed through the river of students flowing out into the corridors, leaving the prefects to ferry the new first years to the dormitory. Past Draco Malfoy, painted up with foolish pride, and Potter, idiotically barefaced and savage.

He evaded the headmaster—or perhaps he was the one being evaded—and took the long way down to the dungeons. Within a few turns, all was quiet, no more voices and no sound save for the faint drip of water behind the walls. He paused for a moment in a deserted corridor and dug his silver cigarette case out of his pocket. He took one out and lit it off his wand.

A long drag steadied his nerves. He shut his eyes, leaning back against the wall. The chill made his skin crawl, and only the coil of smoke in his lungs brought him any warmth. He might have stayed there all night, or at least until his case was empty, but he had barely made it down to the ashes of the first when a soft scuffing sound caught his attention.

He paused. Silence followed, and he was inclined to put it aside as Filch's cat patrolling, but then the sound came again, followed by a distinct clunk. He frowned when he realised the source. The wine cellar was located down here, behind an innocuous and well-warded door between two long-abandoned storage rooms. Somehow it had largely escaped the notice of student lore up until now; the headmaster kept his own stock, and Armando Dippet before him had been a famous teetotaller, leaving the shelves to pile up for decades with the traditional holiday exchange of bottles between the wizarding schools of the world.

His stomach turned, the sudden unwelcome memory of Igor Karkaroff digging its claws in. Last winter the familiar pine wine-box had been delivered, placed beneath the staff Christmas tree like a miniature coffin, and despite his better reasoning, Severus had been unable to keep from turning over the discreet gift tag to see for himself the unfamiliar signature of the new head of Durmstrang.

It sent a sudden lance of impotent fury through him, and he crushed out the last of his cigarette against the bricks and stormed down the corridor, ready to catch the culprit in the act. He turned the corner to find the door ajar and all but kicked it open, a cutting "Well, well," poised upon the tip of his tongue.

Professor Slughorn looked up to greet him with a smile. "Severus, my boy! Or should I say Professor Snape—never did get around to sending my congratulations on that, did I?—I see the roast beef made you as thirsty as it did me."

Severus halted in his tracks, and for a glimmer of an instant he was certain of three things: that Professor Slughorn knew exactly what he'd intended, that he had nearly given him a heart attack doing it, and that for the sake of both their dignities they would just pretend the last five seconds hadn't occurred.

"Ah, here it is!" Professor Slughorn plucked a squat bottle from the rack, regarding the label with apparent satisfaction, and then seized Severus by the elbow before he could make his excuses. "I owe you a..."

He felt unpleasantly like a student again as Professor Slughorn paused over whatever he'd meant to say next and sniffed him with a frown.

"Oh, not that filthy habit, still."

Severus stepped back out of his grasp, absently straightening his sleeve. "You can hardly give me detention for it anymore."

Professor Slughorn shook his head in despair of him. "I would light you a pipe myself if you weren't such a damned fine brewer. A potion-maker's sense of smell and taste are his bread and butter, you know—it wouldn't surprise me if you can't tell the difference between wormwood and wolfsbane anymore."

"There is nothing wrong with my sense of—"

"Sit." Professor Slughorn pointed to the steps and turned to open up the cupboard full of glassware on the far wall. "And close your eyes."

Old habits died hard. For seven formative years that voice had been the principal authority in his life, and while his former head of house was not often known to raise it above a bluster, even the dullest first year learned very quickly that to go unnoticed among the favoured was no different than being punished in one of the other houses. He sat, but he kept his eyes open as Professor Slughorn took down two glasses.

He found himself examining the man closely as he hadn't had the chance to do at dinner. It was odd, but he didn't look very different than he had nearly two decades ago. Perhaps those lines on his face had not been so deep back then, but when Severus was a youth, seventy and some had seemed as impossibly old as one hundred. So had thirty-seven, for that matter. Having Professor Slughorn back looking just the same gave him a strange turn, though not an entirely unpleasant one.

"The headmaster will be annoyed if you poison me," he felt he should mention, still watching the man's hands lest this turn out to be one of _those_ lessons. "He insists it's bad for morale."

It earned him a booming laugh. "That wouldn't be very mannerly of me, now would it—besides, I wouldn't be surprised if you still carry a bezoar around on you. Now close your eyes."

He grudgingly obeyed, giving a start as something cold touched his fingers. He wrapped his hand around the chilled glass.

"Identification?"

Severus was suddenly back sitting his Potions NEWT, blindfolded and standing in front of the cauldron. He carefully swirled the glass and then took a sniff, followed by a sip. "Wine. White wine."

Professor Slughorn's groan made his shoulders tighten. He opened his eyes with a scowl, suspecting he had just made a pleb of himself—something he minded minding.

"White wine? Somewhere in Portugal, some poor vintner has just fallen over dead at that. What you have in your hand is twenty-year-old Tawny Port, and if you hadn't smothered that nose of yours with tobacco..."

It was one thing to insult his breeding and another thing entirely to question his professional acumen. He took another sip. "It's fifteen degrees Celsius. Alcohol content...between fifteen and twenty percent? Tastes of fig and almond with an almost butterscotch aftertaste. Too sweet."

The satisfaction of watching Professor Slughorn's jaw drop left a far better taste in his mouth.

"Well done! I stand corrected, of course—though you should give up the tobacco before it's too late, if you ask me."

No one had, but he budged over nonetheless when Professor Slughorn sat down beside him on the step. He took another sip of the stuff, supposing it was only polite; it likely cost more than he'd make all month. "I will keep it in mind, Professor."

"Bah—call me Horace, or else I'll have to remember to call you Professor Snape, and I won't." He raised his glass. "Congratulations on your new position, by the way. A little bird told me you've been clamouring for it for years."

Severus inclined his head, drinking deep. To his surprise, Professor Slughorn smiled then. Not his usual beaming smile, but a small, sympathetic quirk of his lips beneath his moustache.

"Finally getting out of here, then?" His voice had softened.

One way or the other. Severus drained the rest of the glass, his voice made hoarse with the dry burn of it. "Yes."

Professor Slughorn nodded. "Clever boy."

They sat in silence for a short time after, and then Severus put his glass aside and thanked him for the drink.

"Not at all, not at all. We'll have to do this again. Bring yourself by my office sometime and we'll make believe it's the old days."

For a moment Severus was very tempted to ask if Professor Slughorn actually remembered a single thing about his time at Hogwarts. He doubted it. Lily and Rosier, those had been the rising stars of the day. Rodolphus Lestrange. Regulus Black. No matter how many dinners Severus had offhandedly been invited to, he had never seemed to breach that inner circle; never quite got the insider jokes, never found himself with a personal introduction to anyone more famous than the local apothecary.

Perhaps the wine had worn down his ill humour, however, and he let it lie with a noncommittal nod. He left Professor Slughorn with his twenty-year-old Port and took his leave, stopping only briefly outside the dormitories to make certain all was quiet before retiring to his rooms. For the first time since his visit from Narcissa, his thoughts lingered upon what had been rather than what was to come.

In the time before he fell asleep, he came to the conclusion that for all that it might have been years since last he'd thought of him, he had very nearly missed the old sod.

* * *

It was two weeks before their paths crossed again in any way more meaningful than a word over dinner, and when they did it was far from a pleasant encounter, with _Horace_—it was not so hard to forego honorifics when he wanted to hex the man—cornering him in the staff room and trying to jolly him into letting Potter out of his detention for a meeting of the _Slug Club_ of all things.

"Honestly, Severus, if you had seen the Amortentia Potion he whipped up on the first day of classes, you would have cancelled it yourself!  All I'm asking is to put it off until Sunday—after all, it's not every day one gets to have dinner with the Boy Who Lived, is it?"

Severus ground his teeth so hard it was nearly audible, swallowing over a hard lump in his throat before he managed to spit out a reply. "Some of us have busy schedules that aren't constructed around having tea and cake with students. _Some of us_ have responsibilities."

That infuriatingly jovial smile barely wavered, and for an instant Severus suspected he was about to add something he would eventually regret. Then, miracle of miracles, Minerva McGonagall stopped pretending she wasn't eavesdropping and, even more surprising, took his side.

"Professor Snape outranks you these days, I'm afraid, Horace. And he's quite right: detentions are to be held at the teacher in question's convenience." She smiled then, the pleasant but inarguable smile that had more than once made Severus question whether the Sorting Hat had got it wrong all those years ago. "Besides, this one has already been put off a week, and I'm certain Mr. Potter is eager to get it out of the way."

Professor Slughorn—Horace—looked from her to him and back again, and then his smile was back in full force. "Well, there will be other parties."

Minerva nodded primly. "I'm certain there will be."

Standing his ground until Horace had left and Minerva had returned to her tea and crossword, Severus made a note to ask Hagrid for every last flobberworm he had.

To his disappointment, that night found him in no better a mood, even after Potter had left with red eyes and nicked hands, reeking of worm guts. The boy—sixteen years old and still stubbornly or stupidly a child—might as well have been a firstie in a snit, and his ridiculous, small-minded anger had only stoked Severus's own.

It was past ten o'clock when the knock came at his door. It was too loud to be the headmaster and not urgent enough to be one of the students reporting that the dormitory was on fire. He supposed it was likely Filch, seeing his light on and coming to ask if he wanted to go brat-hunting, and he took his time answering it.

He opened the door midway through the second knock to find Horace Slughorn with a bottle of wine cradled in the ample crook of his arm and two glasses in hand.

"Ah, thought you'd still be up!"

Severus frowned. "I was just turning in." He looked down to find that a foot had insinuated itself into the doorway.

"Not before you give me a chance to apologise, surely."

That hard lump in his throat was back, enraged anew that Potter's fame superseded not only seven years of acquaintanceship but house loyalty as well. "Harry Potter is a spoilt, big-headed, childish little waste of space who hasn't the faintest idea about the real world thanks to half of it bending down to lick his shoes."

Horace blinked, seemingly taken aback by the sudden venom or the non sequitur, or both. Then he shrugged his shoulders unconcernedly. "That could be—he does seem to take rather more after his father than Lily, doesn't he? But he's a hero. That sort of thing tends to work out for them."

Now it was Severus's turn to blink, in mute incomprehension, and Horace seized upon his lapse to shoulder his way in. "Now come on and let us have a drink—I can't abide a grudge."

Severus had no choice but to close the door behind him unless he wished to eject the man bodily, and he supposed he really did have too much on his mind for additional grudges anyhow. He went to clear the books and scrolls off the sitting room table as his guest took it upon himself to look around. When he had first returned to Hogwarts as a teacher, he had elected to take an empty suite rather than the traditional set of rooms that Professor Slughorn—Horace—had recently recovered. It had seemed a minor blasphemy at the time to do otherwise.

He levitated the second armchair out of the corner and brought it over to the table as Horace browsed over his bookshelves. Watching made for an uncomfortable sensation, not unlike the dreams he'd had as a student of showing up to an examination naked.

"Do you speak French?"

Severus recognised the volume in his hand as Flamel's _Le Livre des _figures hiéroglyphiques__, a gift from the headmaster several Christmases ago. "Atrociously. I can read it well enough, though."

Horace's attention seemed to momentarily slip from the illustration he was perusing, as if his prodigious memory were flipping through its mental catalogue until it came to 'P'. "Oh yes. Your grandfather was a Belgian, wasn't he?"

"Is," Severus corrected.

Horace clucked his tongue and put the book back in its spot. "Where are my manners today? Now we need to have a second glass to toast his health."

They sat down opposite each other, and Severus watched as the glasses were filled halfway with a rose-hued wine.

"Tokay d'Alsace," Horace said in an accent that even Severus found deplorable. "To new beginnings."

Severus hummed his uninterested agreement and took a drink. It was surprisingly pleasant, much better than the Port had been. This was dry and tasted of autumn fruit with a lingering taste of...aniseed?

Horace was watching his expression closely, looking pleased at his pleasure. "I seemed to remember you liking liquorice."

That took him aback. It had been so long since he'd indulged in sweets save the occasional one foisted upon him by the headmaster that even he had nearly forgotten that he liked liquorice. He wasn't quite certain how he was meant to respond, but that seemed to be of little consequence, as Horace was more than happy holding up both ends of the conversation talking about his new club: the heirs, the grade-grinds, the Quidditch stars and other up-and-comers.

"She's as much a thug as the rest of the brood," Severus finally had to interject, as Horace went on about Ginevra Weasley and her skill with a hex.

To his moderate delight, it earned him a laugh. It had been no consolation to him as a youth that Professor Slughorn distinguished between useful and useless rather than likeable and disliked; what did he care about being disliked? Now, however, having another Slytherin about the place almost brought some measure of comfort.

"Oh, she's a spunky one, I'll give you that. But mark my words, she'll marry well."

After the first glasses were finished, they indeed drank a toast to Pertinax Prince, rotting away in his spinster sister's house in Yorkshire, and soon after Professor Slughorn—Horace—left him with the rest of the bottle and a warm goodnight.

* * *

It was the beginning of a habit. At least once a week from then on, Horace Slughorn would show up after dinner was through and Severus was done with his marking for the night, and they would share a drink and a bout of adult conversation. It might have been a frivolous imposition with everything else he was dealing with, but having to put on the appearance of good company kept up at least the pretence of normalcy in his life.

On a Sunday evening in late October, Horace came knocking earlier than usual. Severus had decided to forego dinner after a day spent in meetings, first with the Order at St. Mungo's where Miss Bell was still under care, and then waiting for Draco in his office to no avail, and finally in interminable private company with the headmaster, speaking of things that had no right being spoken of in the light of day. He'd returned to his rooms with a pounding headache and was lying on the couch with his eyes shut when the sharp rap came at the door.

He ignored it.

"Come on, Severus, m'boy—supper's getting cold!"

He groaned.

"I heard that!"

After nearly a minute's consideration, he unlocked the door with an irritated wave of his wand. "It's open."

Horace—it was getting easier to think of him thus when he kept bringing him liquor—entered with an enormous basket, and the waft of hot roast beef made Severus sit up.

"Fresh from Orrery's in the village," Horace said, unpacking the overflowing basket. "Be a good lad and get us some plates? I never did get used to the food here, in all my years—it's all just stuff and matter the house-elves put together, you know, with the vitamins and flavour charmed in. It'll fill your belly and keep your teeth from falling out, of course, but it isn't quite like the real thing, is it?"

Severus's appetite surfaced as Horace cut into the roast beef, the plate marred in a most un-Hogwarts-like manner in jus and crackly bits, as did his need for a drink when a bottle of red was set down in front of him. He fetched the plates and cutlery and then uncorked the wine and poured himself a full glass, which he tossed back in three long swallows.

"A good Bordeaux should be savoured!" Horace chided, piling him a plate high with roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, and string beans.

"I'll keep that in mind," Severus said, contrarily pouring himself another glass. He glanced at the clock, wondering suddenly if this had been the plan all day, or if Horace had missed him at dinner and ordered in solely on his account; his only moderately full plate suggested he might have already eaten. The thought pecked at him.

"Thank you," he managed belatedly, only to have it waved off.

"Nothing of it, nothing of it. It isn't Sunday supper without a proper roast."

Severus tucked in with an almost unseemly hunger. He had missed lunch, now that he thought on it, and had only had a little tea and toast for breakfast.

Horace took that as leave to fill the silence, continuing on in his complaints about the school cooking, and where the best Yorkshire pudding in England might be found (unsurprisingly, it was indeed in York), and the culinary adventures he had faced in his recent run of "house-sitting."

Severus, who had heard the tale of his newfound employment from the headmaster and Horace both, frowned at that, a second glass of wine not doing much for the day he'd had. "You should have gone farther than the West Country if you didn't want to be found. There's no hiding in Britain." That brought an abrupt pause to the conversation, and he seized it in his teeth as he reached for the bottle again. "You should have taken yourself to Italy. Or Alsace. Buy your wine cheap."

It took long enough for a reply to come that he very nearly felt guilty, and he drowned the feeling in another gulp of wine. Horace mimicked him with a long pull of his own.

"Ah, well now. I hardly know a soul on the continent. All my friends are in Britain, and take my word for it, m'boy, good friends are the lifeblood of a man's old age." His voice softened. "Good friends and good wine..."

Severus shifted uncomfortably, pushing the last crumbs on his plate around with his fork. Suddenly the man seated across from him was not Professor Slughorn, Potions Master and Head of Slytherin House—larger than life, a bloody enormous fish in a piddling pond—but an aging, portly, harmless man playing the game by rules hardly anyone bothered with any longer. An old world man in a place that was moving on.

Horace drew his wand and cleaned the plates and then packed up the leftovers in the basket. "I'll leave this here in case you should get peckish later." His voice was brisk now, forcibly cheerful. It had barely been more than a half-hour, far shorter than he usually stayed. "Good night, Severus."

Severus startled as Horace suddenly reached for him, and he held himself frozen as his hair was smoothed back out of his face. He didn't like to be touched. In fact, he'd had cause to tell himself that so often that it had eventually become ingrained, as immutable as anything else about him. He was five feet, nine inches tall, and he had black hair, and he did not like to be touched.

It was only when Horace had already withdrawn and his scalp was tingling faintly and the warmth was already fading that he remembered that he did not like being touched because he was unaccustomed to being touched. No one had laid more than a casual hand upon him in longer than he could recall. He was out of practice, rusty, just as he was with his French, which he would never dare try with a native speaker for fear of sounding like a witless fool.

"Good night," he said, as the door was already closing, and it seemed to pause mid-swing for a moment before falling shut and leaving him alone.

He listened, head cocked to one side, until the footsteps outside his door started down the corridor and then faded. Once they had disappeared altogether, he drained the rest of the bottle and soon fell asleep where he sat.

* * *

"Not interrupting, am I? Ah, Master Filch, a pleasure to catch you away from work—how is that sister of yours?"

Severus slunk back a step as Horace broke apart his and Filch's little tête-à-tête__. He hadn't heard him coming; for a big man, he could move with surprising stealth. Filch looked pleased as punch at the acknowledgment, falling all over himself to touch his forelock and shake Horace's hand and babble on about some sister down in Cornwall that Severus had never heard about until now.

He slipped Filch's report into his pocket while Horace was distracted. Say what you wanted about the caretaker, but he saw more of the comings and goings in the castle than did even the headmaster. Severus had set him to keeping an eye on a list of students, only two of which he actually had any interest in. It never paid to be careless.

"—Severus and I were just about to discuss some business, and I'm sure you have plenty of important matters to see to, yourself—"

Filch was nearly puffed up like a cockerel as he agreed that yes, he most certainly did have important matters that needed seeing to, and it was a fine thing to have Professor Slughorn back about the place. He turned just once before setting down the corridor to not-so-subtly tap the side of his nose in Severus's direction. Severus gave him a nod in mild annoyance and let Horace into his apartments.

"Fine fellow, Argus Filch,"

Severus shrugged. "I suppose so." He was not inclined to admit that for quite a while after his hiring, Filch was the only one to give him a modicum of respect around this place. He took the couch, leaving Horace with the good chair, and felt another headache coming on. He closed his eyes momentarily and then found his mouth shaping the name that had come to haunt him at all hours. "Draco. Malfoy."

"I don't want to know!" Horace waved his hands theatrically. "One side or the other, I don't want to know!" Then he paused, and Severus opened his eyes to find him looking thoughtful. "Unless, of course, this is a personal matter."

Severus frowned. "I beg your pardon?"

There was no reply for a moment as Horace inspected the label on the very old bottle he had brought, and then his brow creased as he regarded Severus with sympathy. "Is this a concern of the heart? An extremely unwise, ill-thought-out concern of the heart?"

He imagined in brisk succession this dire situation being nothing more than some idiotic romantic twaddle, then the very notion of him somehow lusting after Draco Malfoy, and finally just what Lucius would have to say about that. "_No_." He paused. "And for God's sake, don't imply anything of the sort around the headmaster."

Horace laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't dare. I know Dumbledore and his modern thinking—no mentoring, and all students equal save for those who are more equal than the others."

Severus snorted, and he nearly held his tongue until he remembered that these were his rooms and either they were both grown men or they weren't. "We all were certain you were, you know."

Thankfully, Horace seemed to find it amusing. "What, buggering the students?"

"I always had my money on Evan Rosier."

It was strange, he realised an instant after he said it, to have remembered him as a classmate again instead of as a corpse. Evan Rosier, golden-haired and disgustingly beautiful and clever. The first to make him decide, privately, that he just might be of a certain unfortunate inclination. Sometimes he had watched Professor Slughorn fussing over Rosier from the edge of the party, and later, pathetic and feverish in his bed, imagined them together. It probably said something that even then he hadn't been the star of his own sexual fantasies.

"Evan Rosier?" Horace sounded a touch incredulous. "What in the world would I have had to teach him, I wonder." He shook his head, raising his right hand in mock testament before setting to uncorking the bottle. "I swear upon my dear mother's grave, not one student I took under my wing while Albus Dumbledore has been Headmaster ever once ended up between my sheets. At least while they were still students."

Severus was inclined to believe him, at least with that qualifier, and sniffed the golden wine that had filled his glass. "What is it?"

Horace laughed. "See? Now if Dumbledore ever had any reason to doubt that I'd been good, I can point out to him that if I hadn't, Severus Snape would know something about fine wine."

The wink that followed puzzled him, and with the annoyance of a buzzing mosquito, he suspected he was being made sport of. He frowned.

"It's Retsina," Horace clarified, taking a surprisingly delicate sip of his own and regarding him closely over the rim of his glass. "A very ancient variety of wine."

Severus took a drink and immediately wrinkled his nose. "It tastes like pine-tar."

The look he was given struck him as strange, though he could not put his finger on why. Horace's smile seemed pursed at first, and then it bloomed again to full, false force. "Well, it's an acquired taste, I'm told."

Severus supposed so, and he tried a second sip just in case he might develop an appreciation for it. He put his glass aside. It was only some time later, when the conversation had turned to recent alchemical work in Germany and Horace had put out a box of honey and walnut pastries, that he caught a glimpse of the label on the bottle. He couldn't read Greek but knew it when he saw it. The picture depicted a man and youth in repose.

He dismissed the thought and then madly entertained it, feeling his face grow hot. It hadn't meant anything. Of course it hadn't.

"I've been reading about something of the sort, myself," he finally managed to mutter when he heard something about salt volatilization.

He suspected that saying anything else, either way, would leave him looking like an idiot.

* * *

It was an unspeakably foolish thing to prey on his mind over the month that followed. There was no time for wine and pastries, no time for talk, no time for anything but meeting in secret with his contacts on both sides of the divide, and trying to pound an ounce of sense into Potter's head in the classroom, and convincing himself that he would survive until the new year.

And yet it snuck into his thoughts at the oddest moments: the idea that he might have been being...courted.

It was ludicrous, of course. Horace Slughorn had always had an odd sense of fun. Severus simply wasn't accustomed to being the object of flirtation and had taken it too seriously, as he was often accused of doing.

But what if it had been earnestly meant? Idly, obviously—the man was bored, and for someone like Horace Slughorn, pleasures of the flesh simply accompanied his other appetites for food and wine and stimulating conversation—but genuinely, without malice. It niggled at him in those empty moments before he fell asleep each night, when he was desperate to keep the pounding assault of suspicions and anxieties at bay.

He had never pursued anyone, and he had certainly never been the one pursued. Not once had he been to Madam Puddifoot's on a Hogsmeade weekend, or canoodled in the common room, or decided through some complicated accord of his friends and her friends that he was "going with" a girl, or any of the other baffling courtship rituals that had seemed to happen so effortlessly for his classmates.

Grizelda Simms had kissed him once, in fourth year, on a dare that in hindsight might not have been so mean-spirited as he had first assumed; he probably shouldn't have hexed all her hair off. Then, in fifth year, due to his possession of a pornographic magazine stolen from his Uncle Jules, he and Edward Wilkes had engaged in a solitary pursuit in not so solitary a manner for about three months' time. They had both returned in sixth year with the good sense to never speak of it again. Five years ago he had visited a brothel, having taken a dose of Polyjuice Potion, and had thoroughly sampled the offerings of both sexes.

It might have seemed a pathetic existence to some, but with no self-delusion he was quite content with it. On occasion, he gave thought to how things might have been had his life taken a different turn, were he not bound to Hogwarts and his grandfather still inclined to arrange a marriage for him. He pictured that imaginary bride at times: a plain but sensible woman who over the years had come to bear a marginal resemblance to a younger Minerva McGonagall, with whom he might have enjoyed pleasant companionship and raised intelligent, respectful children. His passion was not inclined towards women, but successful marriages had been built on less, and he might have been content with that too. As it was, his physical needs were met with his own left hand, and in his day to day life, he found company to be something he had too much of rather than too little.

What manner of interest or feelings he might have for Horace Slughorn did not explicitly occur to him. The novelty was paramount.

Still, the thought remained with him when Horace cornered him in late December and insisted he attend his Christmas party, refusing to take no for an answer. He had agreed because it was polite, and it was responsible, and perhaps because he had never had anyone, Horace Slughorn least of all, beg him to attend a party before.

Like most things in his life, it had turned out to be a painful and necessary mistake. Somehow he had forgotten that he despised parties. The noise was raucous and the decorations garish, and the place was filled to the brim with students and strangers. Potter was there, circulating with the Lovegood girl and giving him the evil eye, and Horace was already piss-drunk on German ice wine from making too many toasts and made an ass of both of them as he slung a gregarious arm around Severus' shoulders.

If there was one thing he could not stand, it was indignity, and while his own was usually his chief concern, Horace's suddenly bothered him by association. For a split-second he despised the man: the foolish, lucky, ignorant drunk. It would not occur to him until much later just why he felt that Horace's behaviour should reflect poorly on him, distracted as he was by Filch charging in with Draco Malfoy in tow.

Petty concerns of the—well, whatever organ to which they may have belonged—were put off to the side the moment he laid eyes on the young man. He had been walking a very fine line these past four months, trying to make Draco take him into his counsel without betraying his allegiances, and this was the first time he had managed to corner him with the trappings of witnesses.

Draco did not look well. Even under the fairy lights he looked particularly pale, his cheekbones sharp and his eyes sunken. Severus knew very well how far Draco Malfoy's capacity for conscience extended, and to see him now like this frightened him to the marrow.

"I'd like a word with you, Draco," he said, attempting to sound casual about it, but some sharp corner in his voice alerted Horace to him.

"Now, Severus," Horace interjected with a hiccup and a look on his face that said clearly that he was recalling just where their last discussion of Draco Malfoy had led. "It's Christmas, don't be too hard—"

Severus cut in before he could say anything even more stupid. "I am his Head of House and I shall decide how hard, or otherwise, to be. Follow me, Draco."

Merry Christmas to him.

* * *

He did, in fact, survive until the new year.

On the night of the 31st, Horace came knocking again, and Severus was too tired to think of an excuse to turn him away.

"Not attending the Ministry bash?" he inquired a touch tartly as Horace swaggered in with a basket in one hand and a gift-wrapped parcel in the other.

"I didn't know if your busy schedule would allow a night off before Thursday after next, so happy New Year and happy birthday."

Severus blinked, struck dumb for a puzzled instant. He could not recall ever having celebrated his birthday at Hogwarts, though he knew his date of birth was a matter of record. "Thank you?"

He weighed the box curiously in his hands. It was long and flat and well-padded inside, too large to be a book and too light to be any sort of brewing equipment.

"Open it, open it," Horace urged him, summoning the glassware with a wave of his wand and settling in to watch.

Severus carefully peeled back a corner of the silver paper as Horace made an impatient sound of disgust at his meticulousness. It perversely amused him to take his time, careful not to tear any of it, watching Horace fidget in his chair. Underneath was a cardboard clothing-box, black and unmarked save for a discreet silver "T &amp; M" embossed in the corner. He suspected Lucius would have been able to tell him what it stood for.

He was aware of Horace watching him very closely as he opened the box and carefully unfolded what proved to be an all-weather cloak. It felt quite well-made and looked unobjectionable; not that Horace was a Gilderoy Lockhart or anything of the sort, more peacock than popinjay, but there were certain styles appropriate for ample-framed jolliness that would have made Severus look like an utter pillock. He'd taken the cloak for black at first, but it was in fact a very dark blue, hooded, with small silver buttons. There was nothing unnecessarily shabby about his old one, but he might have replaced it himself if he weren't so strict about bolting away his inadequate pay.

"Try it on," Horace ordered with an imperious wave of his hand. He looked as though he was enjoying himself entirely too much. 

Severus rolled his eyes, but he knew Horace couldn't be getting paid anything more than he was—at least he had better not be—and he had an inkling of how much this must have cost. He stood up and put it on. It was a perfect fit, the hem not quite swishing the floor in his stocking feet.

"Come on, turn around. Marvellous, marvellous..."

A flush of heat coloured his cheeks as he took it off and neatly folded it up to put back in the box. He sat back down on the couch. "You shouldn't have."

"Nonsense. Dark blue suits you." Horace's grin was on the feral side of friendly, and Severus suspected he might just be being provoked again.

"Is that champagne?" he asked, changing the subject as the basket unpacked itself of the wine and tiny hors d'oeuvres.

Horace tisked. "Bite your tongue. It's only champagne if it's from Champagne, and that's hardly the be-all of sparkling wine. This is Cava, from Spain. You'll like it."

It was put in an ice-bucket to chill as Horace loaded himself up a plate of puff pastries and complicated little kebabs on toothpicks and put the wireless on softly to the WWN. Severus largely tuned it out and poked at a plate of something unidentifiable wrapped in bacon. He took the bacon and left the blobby thing in the middle, not caring if he looked like a clod, and sat back in his chair with a sudden pang of melancholy.

"What is it?"

Severus put his feet up and shrugged. "Another year."

Horace laughed, but not unkindly. "Oh, you're making me feel ancient. You aren't even forty yet, whelp—is it possible to have a quarter-life crisis?"

He scowled. "Thirty-eight is quite old enough to know that one's life has veered far off-course from where one intended it to go, thank you."

Were he with the headmaster, Severus reflected, the man would have laughed again at that, or else smiled sadly and said something irritatingly wise. Horace, however, merely nodded as he grazed over the plate of miniature tarts, and eventually said, "Of course, it's been my experience that anyone who achieves fame and fortune before the age of forty ends up penniless, forgotten, or dead by fifty—or all three."

Absurdly, it almost made him feel better.

The champagne—_Cava_, begging his pardon—was brought out at eleven o'clock, and Severus found himself watching Horace's hands as he twisted the bottle with great flourish until the cork popped out along with a dribble of foam. He had never had champagne and thus had no basis for comparison, but the Cava was quite good as they drank their first toast to the closing year with good riddance. Dry and bubbly, it soothed his stomach after the rich food.

Horace began talking about some promising Hufflepuff Chaser, which soon snowballed into other famous Quidditch players he had taught in their time at Hogwarts, and Severus slowly began sinking down in his seat as the minutes passed, some of the terrible tension seeping out of him. By the time the announcer called it half-past, he was nearly lying down on the couch with his head on the arm, looking up at the ceiling and listening to Horace prattle on about Gwenog Jones for the umpteenth time.

"Top up your glass?" Horace finally asked as he was filling up his own.

Severus held it out, sitting up slightly to do so and getting a dizzy rush. For nothing but bubbles, the stuff packed a wallop. Their hands touched for an instant, and after he drew back, he took a long drink of the fresh stuff.

Horace smiled. "The Cava is a success, I take it."

Severus nodded, which made him slightly dizzier, and lay back down, balancing the glass on the couch at his hip. "You've yet to steer me wrong."

He paused.

"Except for the Port."

He paused again.

"And the Retsina."

His eyes were closed, but he could feel Horace watching him as he idly ran a fingertip along the rim of his glass.

"Though I might be willing to sample that again."

His heart was suddenly pounding in his throat, and his hands were cold.

"Is that so?" Horace asked, sounding pleased and careful.

"Mm." He opened his eyes but kept them on the ceiling as Horace got up and came to sit on the couch beside him. He took hold of his glass to keep it from falling.

He had never been kissed by a man with a moustache before. It wasn't unpleasant. Horace loomed over him, breathing softly against his cheek as their lips pressed together. At first Severus wasn't quite certain what to do with his mouth, but Horace had gravity and insistence on his side, and by the time a hand settled on his hip, warm and heavy, he had forgotten exactly what he was thinking about and ended up doing something right. He warmed at the teasing tip of a tongue tracing the crease of his lips, parting them, and then everything was slow and wet and hot and messy.

The hand moved down to his thigh. His leg twitched.

Horace sucked gently at his lower lip and then drew back, leaving him cold and flushed at once.

"Finish your glass before it goes flat."

He swallowed tightly and then sat up a little more to take a sip. When he did, he found he was suddenly parched. A faint sound—not quite a protest—slipped from him while his mouth was full and Horace's hand began moving up and down his thigh. The heat of it burned right through his robes as the broad palm passed over his lap. The second pass made him harden, and there was a moment bordering on humiliation on the third when he was certain that Horace could feel it.

That was, apparently, the point. Those thick fingers proved surprisingly dextrous as they unbuttoned his robe one-handed. He couldn't watch, looking instead at the gold brocade on Horace's waistcoat, the flickering blaze in the fireplace, and the ceiling, before closing his eyes and breathing out shakily as he was rubbed through his drawers.

"Now, let's see..."

He hissed softly as his cock was drawn out through the slit in his drawers and wrapped up in a firm caress. He managed a sip from his glass, the bubbles burning his tongue, and then his hand simply hovered with it in midair when the stroking began in earnest.

He bit his lip. Fidgeted. Gasped, just softly. He couldn't bear to look, but he had to: just one quick glance at his open robes, and his cock, obscenely red and straining in Horace's hand. Long, slow strokes with a twist and a firm thumb pressing in just the right spot. A little rough, as he liked it.

His head tipped back, and soon his hips were moving with it, his breath coming hard. It wasn't just the strange hand, everything backwards from how he was accustomed to it. He could feel the heat of a body close to his and hear Horace's breathing wear slightly ragged at the edges. The pleasure began deep in his belly, hot and coiling, and he made a faint sound in his throat, but there was no stopping and no speeding up, only the same long, tight, corkscrewing strokes.

He clutched his glass tightly as he came, the distant thought flittering through his mind that it might break, but it only shook as he shivered, sending a slosh of Cava dribbling over his hand, dripping in cold shocks onto his thigh. He breathed out long and hard, his hips easing back down onto the couch and his spine rolling out of an arch.

He was still trying to catch his breath when he felt Horace shift beside him. A hand braced itself heavily on his knee, and then a puff of breath against his bare skin sent another little shiver through him. The leather of the couch creaked, and he heard the faint, lewd sound of lips being wetted, and then Horace was slowly licking up every drop of spilt wine with a soft hum of pleasure.

Severus froze, his legs parted wider than he recalled having spread them, nearly trembling with embarrassment and lingering arousal.

Celestina Warbeck was singing "Auld Lang Syne" when he opened his eyes again. He set down his glass and put his clothes to rights with unsteady hands, the fabric rubbing unpleasantly against his itching skin.

"After midnight—I really should be turning in," Horace demurred smugly, and he clinked his glass against Severus's on the table before downing the last drops.

Severus was left still sprawled on the couch, his body torn between jangling nerves and a head that wanted nothing but heavy sleep. He watched Horace go, the man walking just a little carefully, and found himself with one more debt carried into the new year.

The corners of his mouth nearly twitched.

Bastard.

* * *

The world continued to be full of oddities; as it happened, his busy schedule did allow for another meeting before his birthday. On the seventh of January, he left the door to the bedroom open before admitting Horace to the sitting room, and Horace left the wine on the table as he steered him through the doorway. It was an Amarone, he was informed—a strong, dry, long-lived red from the Veneto region—and if it had waited fifty-four years, it could wait another hour.

They undressed in the dark, the bedroom windowless and the lamps unlit, and Horace had keener night-vision than he'd credit him, as his hands seemed to unerringly find every inch of newly-uncovered skin. Severus had never had anyone else in this bed before, and that more than anything threw him—or at least it was an easier strangeness to think on as he was folded up in Horace's arms and kissed until his blood was thrumming.

Being neither a coward nor an idiot, he had the wits to reciprocate this time, his hands moving under the covers as Horace complained about the thread-count of his sheets.

"Oh, shut up," he muttered, and for a mad moment it seemed more irreverent to tell his former head of house to shut it than it did to wrap his hand around his cock and reduce him to appreciative grunts.

It should have been more uncomfortable than it was. Horace Slughorn was old enough to be his grandfather, as desperately admired and despised as the old man himself in his childhood. He was at once achingly familiar and entirely a stranger like this, naked and breathing hard and touching him all over. Severus gave up on reminding himself that he was a grown man by far, no longer some student spying from the doorway into the secret adult world of the staff lounge. Instead, as a sly, slick hand captured him, oiling his cock in wicked strokes and anointing his thighs, he pretended he was seventeen years old again. Seventeen and stupid and Professor Slughorn's favourite.

"Yes..." He sighed softly despite himself as Horace moved behind him and pressed between his thighs, slick, hot flesh rubbing against him and nudging the sensitive spot behind his stones.

A hand wrapped firmly around his cock, and warm lips nuzzled at his shoulder as their bodies rocked together, long and slow at first, and soon nearly hard enough to rattle even the sturdy four-poster. His left hand had nothing on this on its best days.

He bit his lip as his pleasure twisted and tautened, and as Horace's breathing grew laboured, punctuated by low groans, he found he could not resist once again taking just one glimpse: his thoughts reaching out and brushing as subtly as a moth-wing's across the gossamer defences of Horace's mind.

_Delightful..._

The weight pressing down on him grew heavier, just on the closer side of discomfort, pleasantly crushing the breath from him.

"Delightful," Horace groaned in his ear just before he came. "Oh, I knew you'd be..."

Afterwards, the lights came on at Horace's insistence, and the wine was summoned, and Severus got to enjoy a moment of honest, northern discomfort, because while drinking wine itself had a certain air of effeteness to it, and having sex with another man was the definition of bent, there was still something almost unbearably poncey about drinking wine in bed with the man you had just shagged, especially when said man hadn't even bothered to pull the covers up and was lounging contentedly with his arm around you.

"I should have done this twenty years ago," Horace mused. "Wasn't long for employment here anyhow."

Severus was unnerved for a moment, pulling one of the sheets up to decency's standards and checking his own mental defences. He was fairly certain that not even a climax that good had shaken them. "Why didn't you, then?" He took a swig from the bottle. Not bad. "I wouldn't have minded. Especially if you were getting me drunk on a regular basis."

Horace chuckled and took the bottle from him, taking a thirsty pull of his own. "You reminded me of someone else."

Something told him he didn't want to know, but he had made a second career out of ignoring that voice. "And who would that be?"

He didn't like that smile. It brought out the lines in Horace's face and made him look his age.

Horace turned the bottle over in his hands. Severus glanced at it: a faded pastoral scene and a bottling year, 1943. "A young man called Thomas Riddle."

Severus froze, feeling suddenly as though someone had poured cold water down his back. They did not talk politics, the two of them. They talked about Potions and natural philosophy and literature and Quidditch, and sometimes he thought that was the only thing that had kept him from throwing himself off the Astronomy Tower as a pre-emptive measure. "You were fucking him," he said flatly.

Horace looked alarmed, recovering his arm and frowning. "Of course I wasn't. Tom Riddle...wasn't interested in being anyone's protégé. I only said you reminded me of him."

"How?"

Horace took another long drink. "Half-blood. Proud. Too clever for your own good and not realising that mere cleverness doesn't get you into the circles you want it to. Take my word for it, m'boy, you would have come to a much worse end than this if you'd been born charming."

If that was supposed to be a compliment, it fell substantially short.

"Now, Harry Potter," Horace mused, "He's the same breed. Don't make that face."

"Harry Potter is neither a half-blood, by any modern definition, nor too clever for anyone's good."

Horace smiled, but once again it was that unpleasant smile. "He was asking the oddest questions today..."

Severus's frown deepened. "What sort of questions?"

Horace only shook his head, however. "He's a dangerous boy."

Severus snorted. "To the great misfortune of all, he's a danger to no one but himself."

The bottle was passed back to him, and after a pause, Horace's arm fell warmly across his shoulders once more.

"In my experience, that can be the most tragic sort."

* * *

If there was anything that carried him through the last bloody days of winter and the first grey rains of spring, it was the knowledge that there was at least one thing in his life that neither of his masters had the slightest inkling of. He hoarded his evenings with Horace like a magpie, hiding them, burying them deep where someone would have to carve them out to get to them. They were discreet, and who would believe it anyhow if there were talk?

Which was why he convinced himself there was no strange gleam in Filch's eye when he opened the door one Saturday morning to find him sweeping loudly directly outside of it.

"I think that after ten straight minutes of sweeping, that spot is clean enough." He had been trying to get some actual work done for once, his marking-book still in hand, his index finger keeping his place.

Filch shrugged. "Beggin' your pardon, Professor. Saturday's for sweeping." He paused then, regarding Severus just a moment out of the corner of one pale grey eye. "Heard about Professor Slughorn, did you?"

"Heard what?" A prickle of unease began at the back of his neck and crept down.

Filch stopped his sweeping for a moment. "Nearly got himself done in. Poison. But it wasn't him who drunk it." He gave Severus another look, one which he nearly swore was meant to be consoling. "Had Potter and that Weasley boy with him. This early on a Saturday—_drinking_ with them—and now the Weasley boy's laid up."

Severus took off down the hallway.

The sweeping started up again, and then it stopped once more. "Professor? Professor! You left your door open! I'll just close it, shall I...?"

He nearly dislocated his arm trying to charge into Horace's rooms only to discover the door was locked. He hammered on it impatiently. "Oh, for pity's sake." He drew his wand just as the tumbler clicked open and Horace, ashen-faced, opened the door.

Severus looked him up and down. "Well, you're not dead, we've established that. I assume I'd have heard from someone other than Filch if Mr. Weasley were?"

Horace pulled him into his study, where it was obvious he'd been in the middle of pouring out every bottle he had. "You should have seen Potter's quick thinking—pulled a bezoar right out of my kit—Merlin's beard, someone could have been killed..."

The "someone" was exactly what gave Severus pause as he pushed away his initial relief. "What were you drinking?"

Horace gestured to one of the bottles as though loath to touch it. Mead. Severus had only tried the stuff once, and it hadn't been at Horace's prompting. Something fell into place with a satisfying 'click', leaving a cold, metallic taste in his mouth.

"I don't suppose that bottle was intended for us." He didn't quite make it a question.

Horace slowly shook his head, and then he nodded just as slowly when Severus inclined his head upwards in question, unable to even voice it yet.

He turned on his heel to leave.

"Wait!" Horace cried and then at least had the good grace to look a little chagrined. "Will you come by later? I did nearly die, after all."

Severus rolled his eyes but muttered his assent before he left. He'd been planning to anyhow.

That night they drank nothing, but Severus watched Horace eat enough chocolates that he felt ill by proxy before finding himself pinned down on the couch and had for afters' afters. He sucked his first cock that night—largely due to the fact that between a lack of oil on hand and Horace rutting away like a man who had very nearly escaped death, he was worried his thighs would be chapped raw for a week—and found the act rather less objectionable than he'd previously imagined.

He stole a chocolate afterwards to cleanse his palate, and he straightened himself up while Horace was still trying to catch his breath. With a faint murmur of protest, Horace pulled him back down against him, stroking his hair, which made him squirm uncomfortably; the irony was not lost on him as the chocolate melted in his mouth.

"You're very pale," Horace said quietly.

He wasn't certain if that was a general observation, or some bizarre compliment, or if his nerves were really showing that badly.

Horace took a deep breath and then heaved a great sigh. "It's going to get very bad again, isn't it?"

Severus did not try to deny it.

"Is there anything I can do?"

The question took him by surprise. Horace Slughorn was quite famously a neutral player, a coward of the highest order. It was one of the reasons Severus liked him so much.

He shook his head and spoke carefully. "If something happens...if this all goes balls-up and something happens, turn yourself into another armchair. Try to act surprised when it's over. Get the bloody hell out of England before it's too late."

Horace seemed to take that with surprising calm and solemnity, nodding, and then murmured, "I don't suppose you'll take your own advice?"

Severus frowned. "What do you mean?"

There was no reply for nearly a minute, and Severus began to suspect that Horace had fallen asleep. When he finally spoke, his voice was narrower and more serious than Severus had ever heard it. "I don't know what you think you have to do, but leave the heroics to Gryffindors when you do it—they really do have the most extraordinary luck on their own—and leave the atoning to the Catholics. Dour bunch, fish every Friday and giving up anything worth having for Lent. You're a Slytherin, m'boy—one of _my_ Slytherins—don't forget that. And don't forget what I told you about people who go and make themselves famous before forty."

Severus pretended he didn't know what he was talking about. It was the only way he could get to sleep that night, there on the couch, with Horace's hand in his hair.

* * *

They had not quite two months of sanity left after that. Seven weeks. Seven evenings together. Six times in Severus's bed and once on the floor just shy of it, the night Horace had returned from Hagrid's ridiculous wake piss-drunk and shaken. The memories were all there, wrapped up like fine china and put away, not even to be taken out and admired lest one be dropped and broken.

On the night of June 16th, following two brief stops, Severus apparated into the familiar cold embrace of Spinner's End. He checked to make certain the house was empty and then proceeded to the lavatory where he threw up into the basin, clutching the frigid porcelain until his tremors ceased. He then tore through the house, packing up anything that could be of any conceivable use in what was to come.

It was not until he entered the kitchen that he noticed something amiss. The pantry door, which shut on its own weight, was propped slightly ajar.

He drew his wand and cocked his head, listening. He could hear no breathing, no footsteps; that was not necessarily a comfort.

Carefully, his nerves still strung tight and strumming, he eased open the door with the tip of his boot, the killing curse on his lips. The lamplight streamed down from behind him, illuminating in sickly yellow light the dusty stairs, the earthen floor, the bare shelves. And, incongruously, a wine rack.

Severus paused, certain that he had finally lost his mind, but the rack stayed stubbornly where it was, each of its twelve slots filled. Glancing about in suspicion and charming the door not to swing shut behind him, he crept carefully down the steps to investigate. A sweep of his wand revealed no jinxes or hexes that he could find. It was a bottle of Port on top. Tawny-coloured. Twenty years old.

His hand very nearly shook, and he dropped to his knees, murmuring under his breath: "Tokay...Amontillado...Bordeaux..." Through the next row, and the third. "...Pinot Noir...Retsina...Viognier...Viognier?"

He froze, frowning. He did not remember having tried Viognier, and for a moment the concern that his memory might be failing him overwhelmed the anomaly. Then he carefully catalogued the rest of them. Sherry...Amarone...Cava...

He had not tried the Viognier.

With great caution he scanned the bottle for any tampering. It wasn't a portkey, no, nothing that obvious. He pulled it from the rack and held it in his hands. Just a bottle of white wine, unopened and unremarkable. The label showed a vineyard under blue skies. Steep hills, and a winding river, and a little cottage in the background. In the bottom corner was a scribble of a signature, and if Severus hadn't had sixteen years' experience examining forged notes, he might have missed that it bore the mark of a recent addition.

Villefranche-sur-Saône, Rhône.

He closed his eyes and mouthed it, committing it to memory. Villefranche-sur-Saône, Rhône.

His hand was steadier when he finally slipped the bottle back into its innocuous place. He took a deep breath and rose, shutting the pantry up behind him as he left.

Outside, one last contrary spring storm was brewing. Severus stood at the window, taking out a cigarette and lighting it, catching a flash of sheet lightning in the distance. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and took a deep drag. As he waited to be summoned, he wondered what summers were like in France.


End file.
